Flying over the Alps, gazing out of my tiny window at the jagged topography below, I always half expect to espy the ruins of some inaccessibly ancient mountain temple pitched amid the gleaming peaks. Its sacred fire long extinguished by two millennia of avalanching snows; the stone altar lost amid rubble from innumerable rock slides and the dry bones of sacrificial offerings; its rough carved, rune covered colonnades felled by lightning strikes and sonic boom. Then somebody offers me a plastic tray conveying a reality adjustment of chicken cacciatore and eccles cake manufactured by Sky Gourmet. "And our cabin crew will be coming through with a selection of bladder eviscerating fizzy drinks."
Airport departure lounges, of course, are shopping malls in excelsis. There is no escape. Potential spenders graze the merchandise like cattle on the way to the butcher's yard. At Fiumicino one has the choice of Ferrari, Nike, Tie Rack, and some rather expensive leather goods stores. Prada to go. As usual, I purchased Tazza D'Oro coffee beans: it's something to do during the pre-board boredom. At security they asked me what was in my carry-on bag. Two books and some coffee, I told them. "No liquids!" the woman shrieked - apparently under the delusion that I had intentionally poured hot coffee into my luggage.
weird, I really am pigging out on chocolate covered espresso beans,..and then you mention 'the coffee incident'. it's like freaky.
you must have flown British Air if eccles cakes are on the menu.
amazing the plane can get off the ground with that sort of dense material in the cargo hold.
glad you're back. did you leave anything in the fountain?
Posted by: weird | September 21, 2006 at 14:54
Careful. Edible chocolate coffee beans are designed to make you shop quicker. You enter a kind of caffeine-induced Bullet Time in which you can buy 120 times the amount of things you would normally.
Never EVER eat them whilst on eBay, unless you are blessed with dialup.
Posted by: Mikeachim | September 21, 2006 at 21:45
I did indeed fly BA - though the Eccles cake was fictional - but the unidentifiable cake they did provide could certainly have been made by Eccles of the Goon Show.
Posted by: stephenesque | September 21, 2006 at 23:26
So, did you write the Pope's speech?
Posted by: Mrs. Peperium | September 22, 2006 at 10:35
No. But I did write the prime minister of Hungary's.
Posted by: stephenesque | September 22, 2006 at 17:55
A load of goulash that did to help him, huh?
Posted by: Mrs. Peperium | September 23, 2006 at 08:41